Sawt Falasteen - Le Pen's French presidency bid in jeopardy after election ban

She was also given a four-year prison term by the Paris court but will not go to jail, with two years of the term suspended and the other two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet.

Including 56-year-old Le Pen, nine figures from her National Rally (RN) party were convicted over a scheme where they took advantage of European Parliament expenses to employ assistants who were actually working for the party.

Twelve assistants were also convicted of concealing a crime, with the court estimating the scheme was worth 2.9 million euros ($3.1 million).

Le Pen as well as the other officials were banned from running for office, with the judge specifying that the sanction should come into force with immediate effect even if an appeal is lodged.

"The court took into consideration, in addition to the risk of reoffending, the major disturbance of public order if a person already convicted... was a candidate in the presidential election," said presiding judge Benedicte de Perthuis.

Three-time presidential candidate Le Pen, who scented her best-ever chance of winning the French presidency in 2027 when President Emmanuel Macron cannot stand again, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

She left the courtroom after her conviction and this sanction were announced, but before the judge announced the prison sentence, an AFP correspondent said.

Le Pen can still appeal the entire verdict, including the ban on standing for office, in a case that would normally take around a year to be heard by the court of appeal.

Were that appeal rejected she could go to France's Court of Cassation, but in such a complex case, timings could drag out.

Le Pen had said in a piece for the La Tribune Dimanche newspaper published on Sunday that the verdict gives the "judges the right of life or death over our movement".

She is due to give a primetime TV interview to broadcaster TF1 on Monday evening.

- 'Not healthy in a democracy' -

With her RN emerging as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 legislative elections, polls predicted Le Pen would easily top the first round of voting in 2027 and make the second round two-candidate run-off.

The reaction from Moscow to the verdict was swift.

"More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Other far-right leaders and pro-Moscow figures in Europe also expressed their shock.

"Je suis Marine!" ("I am Marine"), wrote Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of her main allies in the EU, on X in support.

For Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, the verdict was "tough". "I trust she will win the appeal and become President of France," he wrote on X.

But there was also unease within the political mainstream in France.

"It is not healthy that in a democracy, an elected official is prohibited from standing in an election and I believe that political debates should be decided at the ballot box," said the leader of MPs in parliament of the right-wing Republicans, Laurent Wauquiez.

Even the leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) Jean-Luc Melenchon appeared ill at ease. "The decision to remove an elected official should be up to the people," he said.

- 'Fate not decided today' -

But waiting in the wings is Marine Le Pen's protege and RN party leader Jordan Bardella, just 29, who is not under investigation in the case.

Bardella, reacting to the verdict, said French democracy was being "executed" with the "unjust" verdict.

"Of course he has the capacity to become president of the republic," Le Pen said in a documentary broadcast by BFMTV late on Sunday.

But there are doubts even within the party over the so-called Plan B and whether he has the experience for a presidential campaign.

"Le Pen's political fate was not decided today," said Eurasia Group analyst Mujtaba Rahman, while adding that if the judgement stands, her place "would almost certainly be taken" by Bardella.

Le Pen took over as head of the then-National Front (FN) in 2011 but rapidly took steps towards making the party an electoral force and shaking off the controversial legacy of its co-founder and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died earlier this year and who was often accused of making racist and anti-Semitic comments.

She renamed it the National Rally and embarked on a policy known as "dediabolisation" (de-demonisation) with the stated aim of making it acceptable to a wider range of voters.

Prosecutors accused the party of easing pressure on its own finances by using all of the 21,000-euro monthly allowance to which MEPs were entitled to pay "fictitious" parliamentary assistants, who actually worked for the party in France.

"It was established that all these people were actually working for the party, that their MEP had not assigned them any tasks," said the judge.

F.Qawasmeh--SF-PST